World dispatch

Voyage of the arms ship

It is surely only a matter of time before someone makes a film about the raid on Karine A, the arms ship seized by Israeli commandos in the Red sea.

With such a large cast of villains, the movie is going to need a big budget: they include Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, Hizbullah, the Iranians, and a mysterious man with an Iraqi passport.

The heroes, of course, are the Israeli commandos who grabbed the ship and its 50 tons of weaponry in what, under different circumstances, would be a blatant act of piracy. Piracy on the high seas used to be a hanging offence, but these days it's fine - as long as you say it's part of the war against terrorism.

The weapons on board the Karine A included 62 rockets with a range of 20km, hundreds of mortars and anti-tank weapons, mines, explosives, rifles and ammunition. A full list can be found on the Israeli foreign ministry's website (see link below).

Despite the stir this has caused in Israel - fury at what was attempted and delight at its prevention - there has been little excitement elsewhere.

The explosives in the 50-ton consignment, one Israeli calculated, were enough to make 3,000 suicide bombs.

But from outside, it looks different. Fifty tons is roughly the weight of one Israeli tank, or half a dozen of those daisy-cutter bombs that the US drops on Afghanistan. The Israeli arsenal includes everything up to (and including) nuclear weapons. Israeli tanks, rockets and helicopter gunships are in daily use against the Palestinians, so it would scarcely be surprising if Palestinians wanted something a bit more effective than the homemade mortars they use at present.

Nor do the Israelis have much room to complain: they became adept at smuggling weapons themselves during the British mandate of Palestine.

But the real issue is one of politics, not munitions. Israel claims that the weapons were not being smuggled by some wayward militant group but by the Palestinian Authority itself, and that the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, was up to his neck in it.

That would be a breach of the Oslo Accords, which forbid the Palestinians to have weapons beyond a limited range of guns for internal security purposes. Such a breach would be serious, were it not for cavalier attitude that Israel's government under Ariel Sharon has displayed towards the accords - entering Palestinian-controlled territory when it suits them, for example.

More importantly, the Karine A affair provides an excuse for Mr Sharon to obstruct moves towards a resumption of the peace process. That is not something the rest of the world welcomes - hence the American reluctance (so far) to make very much of the incident.

Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, said last week: "The information we are receiving and developing on our own makes it clear that there are linkages to the Palestinian Authority." But he added: "I have yet to see information that links it directly to Chairman Arafat."

On the other hand, Mr Sharon's foreign policy adviser, Daniel Ayalon said: "We have all the evidence, including the documents, that leads directly to Arafat and the Palestinian Authority."

The Israeli army's chief of staff echoed this, saying: "The link to the leaders of the Palestinian Authority is conclusive and undeniable."

Israeli officials suggested last week that the US is trying to turn a blind eye so as not to derail efforts by the American envoy, Anthony Zinni, to establish a lasting ceasefire. But on the basis of the evidence made public so far, Mr Powell's view seems a reasonable one.

At the time of its seizure, the Karine A was captained by Omar Akawi, one of the Palestinian Authority's naval officials. In television interviews (given from an Israeli jail) he said he had been acting under instructions from more senior officials, though he had no idea whether Mr Arafat knew what was going on.

The Palestinian Authority, which announced that it is conducting an investigation, has issued arrest warrants for three people: Fuad Shobaki (said by Israel to have been in charge of funding the operation), plus Adel Mughrabi and Fathi Razem, two members of the Palestinian naval force. It is unclear whether any one them have actually been arrested; the Israelis say not.

The Israeli charge that points most directly towards Mr Arafat is that the ship is owned by the Palestinian Authority. Israeli officials have made this claim repeatedly, from the very first day, but have produced no evidence to support it.

The ship's registration documents show that it is owned by an Iraqi based in Yemen. On August 31 last year, a Lebanese shipping company sold the ship - known at the time as Rim K - for $400,000 (£275,000) to a man who gave his name as Ali Mohamad Abass.

The bill of sale states that he is an Iraqi national, passport number N173170.

Having acquired the vessel from Diana K Shipping in Beirut, the Iraqi buyer renamed it Karine A and on September 12 switched its port of registration from Lebanon to Nuku'alofa in the Pacific island kingdom of Tonga. The Tongan registration certificate gives the owner's name as Ali Mohamed Abbas (a slightly different spelling from that on the bill of sale) and again says his nationality is Iraqi.

Mr Abbas (or Abass) supplied the Tongan registration officials with a mailing address and mobile telephone number in Yemen.

Perhaps by coincidence, the Karine A called at the Yemeni port of Hodeidah - ostensibly for repairs - shortly before it was seized by the Israelis. The address given by Mr Abbas is a box number in the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, but this does not necessarily mean he was trying to conceal his whereabouts. Yemenis normally collect their mail from post office boxes.

Calls to Mr Abbas's Yemeni number last week were answered by an automated message saying the phone was either switched off or out of range. Because of the lack of fixed-line phones in Yemen it is not unusual for businessmen to provide only a mobile number.

But it is comparatively rare for individuals rather than companies to own cargo ships - though the documents leave no doubt that Mr Abbas is the legal owner of the Karine A and has not sold it to the Palestinian Authority or anyone else. We don't, however, know whether Mr Abbas used his own money to pay for the ship.

According to the shipping industry newspaper Lloyd's List, there is also no doubt that the Lebanese-registered Rim K and the Tongan-registered Karine A are the same ship. In both cases vessel's International Maritime Organisation number - 7707114 - is the same.

That leaves only the remote possibility that the ship seized by the Israelis is not actually the Karine A, but a similar vessel repainted and illegally renamed to look like it.

David Osler, who has been investigating the affair for Lloyd's List, said this is very unlikely. "It's a scam more often seen in the far east, usually involving stolen vessels," he said. "But what conceivable advantage of doing that there would be in this case, I can't see."

A registration survey of the Karine A was carried out on September 15 at Burgas on the Black sea coast of Bulgaria. Lloyd's List quoted the surveyor, Captain Abdul Kader Issa of Hellenic Marine Services, as saying that the ship - built in Spain in 1979 - had been loading normal cargo when he inspected it and he found nothing suspicious.

Israeli media reports say the Karine A later carried a routine cargo from Sudan to Dubai, where it unloaded and crossed the Gulf to Kish, an island 12 miles off the Iranian coast, to pick up the weapons.

Kish is a free trade zone, more easygoing and prosperous than most of Iran, and has strong commercial ties with the United Arab Emirates.

Other Israeli reports identify the Iranian island as Qeshm, which is also a free trade zone but larger than Kish and a little further east, in the Strait of Hormuz.

The Karine A appears not to have docked in Iranian territory but, according to the Palestinian captain's confession, took on its weapons cargo nearby from another ship.

Israel says the weapons originated mainly in Iran, and there is no evidence at present to cast doubt on this. Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shi'a organisation which has close ties with Iran, is also accused of involvement in the operation.

Initially there was concern in Israel that some of the weapons might turn out to be Israeli-made. This was because various Israeli defence contractors had a flourishing export trade to Iran in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It eventually came to a halt when Hizbullah acquired Israeli-made mortars from Iran and started firing them at Israeli troops in Lebanon.

The most puzzling question in the whole affair is what Iran hoped to achieve by supplying weapons to the Palestinian Authority (or elements within the Authority) - if that is what it really did.

Anyone deciding to supply weapons from the Gulf would have to take into account not only the effects of a successful delivery but also the very high probability of being caught. The area is constantly monitored, partly because of Iraqi oil smuggling but latterly also in the hunt for fugitive supporters of Osama bin Laden.

To be exposed as the source of the weapons would cause serious difficulties in Iran's fragile relations with the United States as well as in its moves towards detente with Britain. Besides that, neither Iran nor Hizbullah has ever shown much sign of being well disposed towards Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority.

Their differences are both religious and political. Hizbullah and he Iranian regime are rooted in Shi'a Islam, while the Palestinians are mainly Sunni Muslims and Christians. Politically, their sympathies lie more with radical groups such as Palestinian Jihad than with Yasser Arafat, whose policies they regard as misguided and doomed to failure.

While there is no doubting the hostility of Iran and Hizbullah's stance towards Israel, it is difficult to see why they would want to help Mr Arafat. Last week, experts on Iran seemed stuck for a coherent explanation, though they did offer a few theories.

One is that the arms shipment might be an unauthorised - and strictly commercial - venture by the Revolutionary Guards' navy which has previously transcended politics with its involvement in Iraqi oil smuggling. But some think the number of weapons was too large for the Revolutionary Guards to supply without higher authority.

Another view is that the arms deal might be the work of hardline elements inside the Iranian regime, aimed at stopping rapprochement with the west and at embarrassing President Mohammed Khatami and the reformers.

Yet another view is that it might have been intended to radicalise the Palestinian struggle, on the basis that a successful delivery would allow the Palestinian Authority to adopt a harder position, while failure would damage the PA and boost the radicals, such as Jihad and Hamas.

They are all interesting and tantalising theories, but until more evidence comes to light we can only speculate as to which - if any - of them is correct.